


Lightning

by azurish



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 13:36:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/887885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/azurish/pseuds/azurish
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Jeanne Prouvaire wears pink lipstick and skinny jeans and ballet flats and Bahorel feels like she’s been hit by a thunderbolt.  Jeanne has long, ash-blond hair and the kind of wistful smile best directed out of a rain-streaked window by an actress in an indie drama, and Bahorel’s whole body tightens up in visceral reaction the first time she sees it.  There’s something about those deceptively guileless green eyes that seems to cut right through all pretenses, and it just stops Bahorel’s heart for a moment."</p><p>Ildiko Bahorel meets Jeanne Prouvaire in Budapest.  Or, the one in which Bahorel and Prouvaire are both girls and still just as intrepid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lightning

            Jeanne Prouvaire wears pink lipstick and skinny jeans and ballet flats and Bahorel feels like she’s been hit by a thunderbolt.  Jeanne has long, ash-blond hair and the kind of wistful smile best directed out of a rain-streaked window by an actress in an indie drama, and Bahorel’s whole body tightens up in visceral reaction the first time she sees it.  There’s something about those deceptively guileless green eyes that seems to cut right through all pretenses, and it just stops Bahorel’s heart for a moment.

            Later that night, when she’s walking home alone, kicking an empty soda can in front of her along the sidewalk, the steel-capped toe of her boot clattering loudly against the tin of the can, Bahorel finds her thoughts circling back to Jeanne without her permission.  She’s trying to work out a read on the men and women who had been in that room behind the café on Andrássy út, but she’s finding it hard to focus.  She summons up a mental picture of Feuilly – the boy with the strong Budapest accent and the strong opinions about courting EU assistance – but instead a set of sharper, more pointed features appear in her mind’s eye.  That quiet smile presents itself to her again, and, without intending to, she kicks the can all the way into the street.

            (She dreams about long fingers and long blond hair that night.  And all right, Bahorel is no stranger to _that_ kind of dream, but she’s never had an interest like this come on so suddenly.  She wakes up panting, tangled in the bed sheets, the stifling summer heat pooling in the crevasses of the room and a different kind of heat pooling in the pit of her stomach.  She opens a window and sits on the floor, smoking a cigarette, but she can escape neither the heat wave oppressing the city nor the images of Jeanne still flitting through her mind.)

            A week passes.  Bahorel doesn’t go back to the café on Andrássy út.  Bit at the end of the week, she’s out at a bar near the easternmost edge of Pest with Grantaire.  She tells herself that it’s because Grantaire is an old friend and a tolerable drinking buddy, but then, after nearly an hour, she suddenly asks, “So, what about that girl – Jeanne – then?  What’s her deal?”

            Grantaire seems unbothered that Bahorel has just cut him off mid-incoherent rant about the state of European theater.  Instead, he frowns, contemplates the question, and swigs his beer. Then he says, “I don’t really know her that well.  I think she’s at CEU with Courfeyrac – that’s the girl with the curls?”

            Bahorel’s eyebrows fly up.  “She’s a CEU student?”

            “Yes, but she’s actually in one of their humanities programs.  Medieval studies.  Or something.  I think?” Grantaire holds his beer up to the light, studies the color of the liquid, and then shrugs and drinks.  “I dunno, man.  She’s been coming to meetings for months now.  Just showing up at the café.  She likes history, revolutions – 1848 more than 1956, she’s that kind of girl.  Loves Petőfi.”

            Bahorel nods.  “Yeah, OK.  Makes sense, then.  I was just wondering how someone like her,” and she makes an expansive gesture to convey _Jeanne_ , as far as she understands her, with her blond hair and her pastel blouse and her surprisingly vehement objections to Feuilly’s EU intervention plan, “gets involved with people like your Enjolras.”

            “He’s not _my_ Enjolras,” says Grantaire, who appears to have registered only the end of Bahorel’s sentence.  He looks suddenly miserable.  “I mean – yeah.”

            “Yeah, what _is_ that all about, anyways?” Bahorel asks.  “The way you talked about that guy, I thought –”

            Grantaire groans and ducks his head.  His overlong bangs flop down in front of his face (and honestly, at this point, his bangs are longer than most of Bahorel’s _hair_ ), obscuring his features entirely, but Bahorel knows him well enough to be sure that he’s wearing the longing expression he gets sometimes after a night of drinking.  He groans again and then proceeds to lecture Bahorel at length on all the ways in which he _wishes_ Bahorel’s assumption about him and Enjolras had been true, and he doesn’t stop until they get kicked out of the bar at closing time.  Bahorel walks him home because she’s a good friend like that, and on the way she gives the bird to two different guys who make suggestive comments about them.

            She goes back to the café on Andrássy út later that week.  (After all, Grantaire’s invitation _had_ been a standing one, and she had liked what Enjolras had been saying about organizing a midsummer protest against Fidesz’s constitutional changes.)  And if she wears her favorite scarlet lipstick and polishes the toes of her steel-capped boots, well, that’s only natural.

            But she doesn’t get to talk to Jeanne _at all_ this time, because she happens to mention a student political group up near Józsefváros that she sometimes hangs out with to Combeferre, and she spends the next hour fielding excited questions.  She eventually tells them about the time she punched a police officer during the March protests, and _then_ they’re off to the races; Courfeyrac, Combeferre, and Enjolras gather in a circle around her and she’s bombarded with questions.  Once or twice she looks up from their excited huddle and she thinks she catches Jeanne watching her out of the corner of her eye, but she might have imagined it – and then Combeferre asks her something specific and she’s immersed in the group discussion again.  But it’s not all bad, because it turns out that she actually _likes_ these students – particularly after Combeferre tells her that _sh_ _e_ had actually been part of the 2006 riots as a young college student, and Enjolras manages to capture even her attention with a short, impassioned statement about why he hates Jobbik, and Courfeyrac relates the gist of a particularly sharp, sarcastic piece she’d written for the student newspaper after the recent round of constitutional amendments.  The night wears on and Bahorel is nodding in agreement far more than she’d expected.  By the time Enjolras looks at his watch and declares, with a faint hint of embarrassment, that it’s nearly midnight, Bahorel is almost sad to go.

            She realizes on the walk home that she didn’t even _talk_ to Jeanne, though, and she swears viciously under her breath.  She’ll have to go back again.  (But this time she has more reasons to return, after all – for instance, she still _really_ wants to ask Combeferre more about the methods she’d mentioned for avoiding pepper spray.)

            A few afternoons later, Bahorel finds herself walking along Andrássy út in broad daylight, and she ducks into the café on impulse.  Most of the regulars aren’t there, and the door to the backroom seems to be locked, but Jeanne is at a table with two fellow students (Joly, maybe?  And the bald one – Bahorel can’t remember what the bald girl’s name was).  Jeanne is wearing a polka-dotted skirt this time, and Bahorel makes a beeline for her.  But then she realizes that Jeanne is in the midst of a debate with the other students, so she sits at a nearby table instead and listens to Jeanne mount a spirited defense of Imre Nagy.  Bahorel doesn’t agree with everything Jeanne says, but she finds that she likes the other girl’s admiration for the man who, regardless of his flaws, lost his life trying to deliver Hungary from the USSR.

            Bahorel makes no bones of the fact that she’s watching Jeanne, and once or twice the other girl looks up, catches her watching, and blushes.  Bahorel just smirks.

            Jeanne doesn’t let it affect her argument (much), though, and she concludes with an impassioned rhetorical flourish.  There’s a little more light-hearted bickering, but then Joly and bald-girl leave, and Jeanne is alone.  Bahorel approaches.

            “Hey,” she says, and slides smoothly into the seat opposite Jeanne’s.  “Ildikó Bahorel.”

            Jeanne nods. “I remember – Grantaire brought you the other week.”

            “So.  Can I buy you a drink?”

            There’s that blush again.  (The thing about the blush is that it might easily be mistaken for the kind of coquettish affectation Bahorel gets from the femmes she picks up every so often on her nights out, but there’s something in the set of Jeanne’s jaw that’s still removed and _powerful_ , even when she’s blushing like a schoolgirl.  She’s blushing because she’s kind and polite and bashful, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t still have eyes that are bold as brass and fierce.  It makes Bahorel feel like the floor’s been pulled from under her every single time.)  “It’s a bit early for that, wouldn’t you say?”

            “Oh, no, I meant – coffee, tea, something like that?”

            Jeanne smiles, and OK, Bahorel _might_ really have a thing for that smile.  “I’d love a coffee, then – black, please.”

            Bahorel heads for the counter, leaving her bag on the seat opposite Jeanne’s, a clear marker of her territory.  As she waits in line, she silently dares anyone to try sitting there.

            She comes back with two coffees, and she sits there and burns her tongue on scalding coffee as Jeanne talks about why the post-Communist reclamation of the Liberty Statue on Gellért Hill is the most beautiful thing in Hungarian art history.  Bahorel listens in fascination as Jeanne talks about things like living art and historical memorials and the politics of reclamation and she feels like she can almost understand, through the brightness and compassion that burn in Jeanne’s eyes, why people have killed for art.  Then Jeanne trails off.  She blushes once again and says, “I’m sorry, but – are you really listening?”

            Bahorel blinks and realizes that the way she’s been staring usually doesn’t indicate appropriate polite interest.  “Yeah, sorry, I just – no, but yeah, I’m listening.”  She pauses.  “Have you ever been up Gellért Hill at night?  The way they light up the statue, it’s gorgeous …”

            Jeamme shakes her head just slightly, and a blond curtain of hair slides loose in front of her eyes.  She tucks it back behind an ear with a delicate little gesture.

            “We could go,” Bahorel offers suddenly.  She’s not even fully sure what she’s saying, but it feels like a good direction to go in, and Bahorel hasn’t got where she is today by ignoring her gut instincts.  “Tonight.”  Jeanne hesitates.  Bahorel says, “Let’s do it.”

            “All right,” Jeanne says, to Bahorel’s surprise.  Then before Bahorel can say anything else – “Meet me at Liberty Bridge on the Pest side.  Let’s say – eight o’clock.”  She glances down at her watch.  “I have to head to class now, but I’ll get out around seven.”  And then she smiles that smile.  “See you there.”

            Jeanne gets up, pushes her chair in carefully behind her, and leaves.  Bahorel feels like she was just flattened by a very polite, pastel, polka-dot-wearing steamroller, and she isn’t quite sure how it happened.

            The summer heat wave still hasn’t released its grip on the city, and it’s hot as hell outside even at night.  The breeze near the river makes the heat tolerable, but only barely.  But Jeanne is already waiting for her when Bahorel gets to the bridge, so Bahorel jogs the last few yards to meet her.

            “How was your class?” Bahorel asks to fill the silence as they cross over from Pest to Buda.  Far below, the rapid currents of the Danube assault the supports of the bridge, the water frothing white where it crashes into the concrete columns.

            “All right,” Jeanne says, and then she shrugs and falls silent.  Bahorel casts her mind around for any other possible topic of conversation, but before she can worry that she’s done something wrong, Jeanne reaches out and grasps her hand.  Thanks to the insufferable heat, Bahorel’s palm is sweaty (or at least, she’s blaming the heat), so her first instinct is to pull away, but Jeanne’s grip is unexpectedly strong and OK, even if Bahorel wasn’t expecting this, it’s definitely a step in the right direction.  So she intertwines their fingers and when a passing guy catcalls at them, she flips him off easily.  Jeanne’s hand is surprisingly large and solid – for some reason Bahorel had been convinced her hands would be petite, but, although her fingers are indeed long and delicate, her whole hand is only a little smaller than Bahorel’s, for all that Bahorel has a head and a half on her.

            They walk in silence the rest of the way.  It’s a melancholy sort of silence, their own little island of noiselessness among the screech of tires and cadence of voices all around them.  But Jeanne seems to feel nothing needs to be said, and Bahorel appreciates that.  When they reach the trail up Gellért Hill, the rest of the world joins them in silence – the only noise around them is the soft tapping of their shoes against the stone steps, the sounds of nighttime Budapest muffled by the greenery.  Any other pair of people might have found the silence eerie, but Bahorel _likes_ the edge of tension in the silence in the dark, and so, it seems, does Jeanne.  The whole experience feels otherworldly, and when they emerge from the leafy green path into the open air at the top of the hill, Bahorel feels like she’s just come up for air from some dark underworld.

            When Jeanne sees the statue gleaming in the lights, she gasps and smiles, and Bahorel finds _herself_ grinning at the sight of that lovely smile, just for her and _because_ of something she’d done, lit up by the electric lights around the statue.  Bahorel sits at the base of the statue steps for a while, scratching some flaking red nail polish off, as Jeanne examines the moments from every angle, studying the way the light and the shadows fall on the bronze figure.  When Jeanne gets back, she has about half a dozen new observations to impart to Bahorel, and Bahorel smiles as she listens to the cadence of Jeanne’s words while she looks out over Budapest.

            Eventually, Jeanne falls silent.  She abruptly sits down next to Bahorel and leans against her side.  “Thanks,” she says.

            They sit and watch their city together.  The city lights blaze brightly against the night sky.  The statue is lit up almost as brightly behind them, and the two of them are bathed in light.  Bahorel slides an arm around Jeanne because that’s _what you do_ , and it’s very comfortable, just breathing and still in the night.  Tourists come and go, their camera flashes like starbursts, the light pollution obscuring the actual stars, and they just sit.

            On the way down, Jeanne turns to Bahorel and breaks the silence, saying, “Tell me about yourself?”

            So Bahorel does.  She finds the words just spilling out – Jeanne wields her ability to _listen_ like others wield weapons, her responses so natural and so compassionate that Bahorel can’t possibly resist.  She talks about her studies at law school (currently indefinitely on hold, thanks to the recession), the family back out west that sends her enough money to keep her afloat in combination with whatever she earns from the odd jobs she picks up, the three older brothers in Debrecen who call her “Ildi” and taught her soccer when she was four, the Budapest bars she loves, the protests she’d been involved in.  Jeanne listens.

            And then Jeanne starts talking about herself.  She tells Bahorel about growing up as the only child of a wealthy family.  She talks about how the disrepair of the Budapest Museum of Fine Arts has made her cry and about how she, too, knows what it’s like to face riot police.  She confides in her that she wants to go to Paris someday and visit the grave of the poet Nerval.  They fill their own space in the darkness with noise, instead of silence, on their way down the hill and out across the river, and it’s just as good.

            Soon enough, they reach the Pest side of the city, but they just keep on walking.  Bahorel thinks they’re wandering aimlessly, until they end up in Petőfi Square, right in front of the statue of Sándor Petőfi.

            Bahorel looks up at the statue of the poet who inspired a revolution, and all of a sudden she thinks she might finally understand why Jeanne Prouvaire made her feel like she’d been hit by lightning when she first met her.  Jeanne’s body is between her and the nearest streetlamp, and her profile is cut out sharply in the yellow edges of the light.  She is beautiful.

            On impulse, Bahorel leans forward, but Jeanne seems to have had that idea first, because her mouth crashes into Bahorel’s just a few seconds later.  She kisses like a tidal wave, inexorable and unstoppable and overwhelming.  Bahorel bits lightly on her lip, and Jeanne smiles fiercely against her as she opens her mouth up to her.  Bahorel feels lightheaded when they break apart.

            Jeanne smoothes back the blond bangs that always seem to be coming loose.  Her cheeks are faintly flushed, but her expression is serene.  “I’ll see you tomorrow at the café.”

            Bahorel cudgels her thoughts into order quickly.  “Yeah, I – yes.”

            Jeanne nods.  “Good night, then, Ildi,” she says, and she walks away.

            Bahorel watches her until her pale sweater disappears around a corner, and then she finds a nearby bench to sit on as she contemplates the statue of Petőfi in the dark.  Sándor Petőfi wasn’t _half_ as striking as Jeanne Prouvaire is, she decides, and she grins.  The blood is singing in her veins the way it hasn’t since the protests in March.

            The thunderstorm that they’ve been predicting will break the heat wave arrives as she’s walking home, and she laughs as thunder rolls and rain soaks through her thin t-shirt.  A passerby shoots her an alarmed glance, but Ildi Bahorel doesn’t care.  She feels like she really _has_ been struck by a bolt of lightning, electrified and alive and just a little awed.  She already knows that she’ll be returning to the backroom of the café on Andrássy út tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> I got tired of people talking about how femme!Jehan is too weak, so I decided to try my own hand at writing a badass female!Jehan, and in the process, I realized that female!Bahorel was way too much fun to leave out. =)  
> (Also, I may expand this out into a full-fledged Budapest AUniverse, because contemporary Hungarian politics are a really fascinating and /relevant/ canvas onto which to transplant the political-revolutionary fervor of Les Amis, and Budapest itself is a beauitful, historical city.)


End file.
